Review: Sero 7 Lite is a $99 tablet that isn’t the worst thing ever

But there's a wide gap between "usable" and "pleasant to use."

Two-and-a-half years ago, we reviewed a tablet called the Maylong M-150. It was a $99 Android tablet sold exclusively at Walgreens, and there is a word for the people who spent their hard-earned money on it: "rubes."

We (without hyperbole) called the Maylong M-150 the "worst gadget ever," but the times have changed. Android has improved by leaps and bounds, hardware has become both faster and cheaper, and the Nexus 7 (still one of our all-time favorite Android tablets) starts at a mere $199. When Hisense announced its $99 Sero 7 Lite tablet alongside its Nexus 7-esque $149 Sero 7 Pro a couple of weeks back (a separate review is forthcoming), we figured it was time to revisit this price point to see what, if anything, had changed.

Can Benjamin Franklin buy you a good tablet in 2013? We'll run the Sero 7 Lite through the wringer to find out.

Body and build quality: Feels a little better than $99

Enlarge/ The smooth, brown, plastic back of the Sero 7 Lite isn't as nice as the soft, grippy plastic of the Nexus 7. It's still not terrible, though.

Andrew Cunningham

Specs at a glance: Hisense Sero 7 Lite

Screen

1024×600 7" (170 ppi) 5-point capacitive touchscreen

OS

Android 4.1.1 "Jelly Bean"

CPU

1.6GHz dual-core Rockchip RK3066

RAM

1GB

GPU

Quad-core ARM Mali 400

Storage

4GB NAND flash (expandable via microSD)

Networking

802.11b/g/n

Ports

Micro USB, mini HDMI, headphones, microSD

Size

7.87" x 4.80" x 0.41" (200 x 122 x 10.5 mm)

Weight

0.73 lbs (330g)

Battery

3400 mAh

Starting price

$99

Other perks

Power adapter

Warranty

One year

The Sero 7 Lite doesn't have the build quality of something like the Nexus 7 or Kindle Fire, but it's not as bad as I was expecting. It's got an all-plastic back and a glass front, and relatively thick black bezels surround its 7-inch touchscreen. The tablet is very slightly larger in height and width than the Nexus 7 (7.87" by 4.80" by 0.41" compared to 7.81" by 4.72" by 0.41"), but the two weigh basically the same (0.73 pounds for the Sero and 0.75 for the Nexus).

The brownish plastic back of the tablet actually doesn't feel too bad to hold—it lacks the slightly rubberized, grippy texture of something like the Nexus 7, but it's reasonably sturdy for the price. It does flex a bit if you press on it, especially toward the middle where the Hisense logo is, but the construction and the heft of the tablet are much better than I was expecting.

That said, when the tablet is in active use, the top of it can get pretty toasty—not hot enough to be in any way dangerous, but certainly warm enough to make the tablet smell faintly of burnt plastic. It doesn't inspire a ton of confidence, but since the tablet didn't burn my apartment down I'm willing to describe it as a minor annoyance rather than a deal breaker.

Enlarge/ The microSD card slot and mini HDMI port are two things the Nexus doesn't have. The micro USB port and the headphone jack are up there too, as well as a hard-reset pinhole.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The tablet's power button and volume rocker are on the left side of the tablet, the opposite of the Nexus 7.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ That the single, rear-facing speaker is both tinny and quiet should surprise no one.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The 0.3MP front-facing camera in the tablet's upper-left corner.

Andrew Cunningham

All of the Sero 7 Lite's ports are lined up across the top of the tablet, and it actually comes with a couple of things that the Nexus lacks. The first is a microSD card slot, which can expand the tablet's paltry 4GB of internal storage by up to 32GB. The second is a mini HDMI port, which supports 1080p and 720p at 50 and 60Hz (576p at 50Hz and 480p at 60Hz are also available options). You can choose the HDMI output resolution manually in the tablet's settings, along with overscan settings.

Otherwise, the tablet doesn't come with many perks, and even things we would consider "bare necessities" are pretty perfunctory. There isn't a rear-facing camera, but the 0.3MP front-facing camera should suffice for video chatting and (grainy, low-res) selfies. The single, rear-facing speaker is quiet and has absolutely no bass worthy of the name. However, the tablet's microphone worked perfectly well with Google Now and the sound quality out of the headphone jack isn't any worse than my Nexus 7.

The screen: Definitely looks like $99

Enlarge/ The Sero 7 Lite (left) compared to the Nexus 7 (right). The Nexus 7 has a higher resolution, better contrast, and more vibrant colors.

Andrew Cunningham

The body of the tablet isn't the height of quality, but the screen is where you're really losing out. For starters, it's a 7-inch 1024×600 display with 170 pixels-per-inch, which you'll definitely notice in a world where screens with 200, 300, or even 400 PPI are becoming the norm. The bigger problem by far is image quality: the display is very cool (in the blue sense, not the Fonzie sense), colors are washed-out, the contrast ratio is low, and all of these problems are exacerbated by shallow viewing angles.

In fact, it's hard to find anything nice to say about the display, other than it's a five-point capacitive touch affair that seems reasonably responsive and accurate (the Maylong used a resistive touchscreen instead, which is much less pleasant to interact with). Everything on it looks cloudy and bluish, and the contrast ratio is so poor that it makes the pixel density look worse than it actually is. Allow me to demonstrate using a first-generation Kindle Fire, which also has a 7-inch 1024×600 display.

Those of you with long memories may recall that we rooted this Fire last year to demonstrate how Amazon's Android fork was holding its hardware back. We took it out of mothballs and re-flashed it with the RC4 build of CyanogenMod 10.1 so we could run some of the same apps on it and the Sero 7 Lite side-by-side.

Let's look at the screen of our rooted 2011 Kindle Fire, which has the same size and pixel density as the Sero 7 Lite. This is a zoomed-in picture of the Twitter app at max brightness—look at the L in "sequel" and note that it's made with one vertical line of black pixels and one vertical line of grey pixels. Also note the T in "to," most of which is made from two columns of almost-black pixels.

Andrew Cunningham

The exact same shot of the Sero 7 Lite's screen at max brightness. Look at the L—the black column of pixels is visible, but the grey column almost fades into the "white" of the background. The T is very nearly blurred into obscurity. The blurriness of text caused by the low pixel density is made worse by poor contrast.

Andrew Cunningham

The two screens share exactly the same resolutions and pixel densities, but text looks even worse and blurrier on the Sero 7 Lite. The contrast ratio on the screen is so bad that Android's font smoothing makes those fonts look worse in many apps—the subtle grey edges added to the letters bleed too much into white and black backgrounds. In general, it's also difficult to distinguish different shades of black or grey from one another, which may cause additional problems in some applications.

Finally, the glass that covers the front of the tablet lacks any sort of oleophobic, fingerprint-resistant coating. The tablet's screen quickly becomes a smudgy mess over the course of just a couple of hours, and those smudges prove difficult to get rid of.

The screen is usable, but it irritates my eyes a little to read text on it for extended periods of time. It's a poor screen, plain and simple, and it's the biggest reason to spring for a more expensive tablet.

The software: 10-inch UI, 7-inch screen

Let's start with the good stuff: the Sero 7 Lite is running a largely bloatware-free, stock version of Android 4.1.1 with full access to the Google Play store, Google Now, and all of that version of Android's other major features. There are a few pre-installed apps, most of them borne of the tablet's Wal-Mart exclusivity: the Vudu video player app, Sam's Club and Wal-Mart apps, the AccuWeather Plus app, and a copy of the (free) Kingsoft Office suite. Otherwise, pretty much everything is stock; stock e-mail app, stock browser, stock fonts and icons.

That a $99 tablet wouldn't come with Android 4.2 when most major companies' products still don't is not surprising, but that it doesn't at least come with Android 4.1.2 and its various bug fixes is a little odd. Even more odd is that the tablet doesn't use the purpose-built 7-inch tablet interface introduced by Jelly Bean and the Nexus 7, but the "old-style" 10-inch tablet layout introduced by the Motorola Xoom and Android 3.0. The Xoom retained this interface in its Android 4.1 update, but the Nexus 10 and Android 4.2 swapped it out for something more consistent with the phone and 7-inch interfaces.

Enlarge/ The Sero 7 Lite uses the "old-style" Android tablet layout. The four corners of the screen, going clockwise from the upper-left: the Google search button, the app drawer, the notification center/system tray, and the nav buttons.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The Nexus 7 and Android 4.1 introduced a new Android tablet layout optimized for 7-inch screens. It sticks quite a bit closer to the established Android phone layout: nav buttons centered at the bottom, the app drawer in the dock, and notifications up top. It also fits two more rows' worth of icons, where the Sero 7 wastes space.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ Using a third-party launcher like Nova Launcher, you can reclaim this wasted screen space on the Sero 7.

Andrew Cunningham

As someone used to the Nexus 7, I realize that my preference for the "phone-like" 7-inch tablet layout may be a matter of personal taste. That said, it's difficult to overlook how much screen real estate the layout wastes, especially while in portrait mode—enough for at least two full rows of application icons. The old 10-inch interface was always a bit more functional in landscape mode, but in portrait mode (the way I hold 7- and 8-inch tablets most of the time) you're not making the best use of the screen.

This observation extends to some of the applications, which try to use a layout and spacing intended for a 10-inch tablet on a 7-inch screen and just end up looking cramped. We pulled up the Settings and Gmail apps to demonstrate what we mean.

The "7-inch" Gmail app, top, makes more room for your labels and things on the left. Squeezing the "10-inch" interface onto a 7-inch screen, bottom, often results in text wrapping.

Andrew Cunningham

The "7-inch" settings screen, top, presents all the top level settings options to you. Tapping any of them takes you into another subscreen. The "10-inch" interface, bottom, squeezes the top-level settings and the subscreens onto the display at the same time, which looks cramped on a small display.

Andrew Cunningham

Alternate launchers can help with some of these problems—with a little tweaking, I was able to get Nova Launcher to give me a Nexus 7-esque look-and-feel on the tablet's home screen, though the notifications and system settings were still on the bottom of the screen instead of the top and applications that try to use their "10-inch" layouts were still problematic. Again, it really comes down to what you're used to—if, as I do, you prefer the 7-inch Android layout as introduced in Jelly Bean on the Nexus 7, the "old-style" layout on the Sero 7 Lite is going to drive you a little crazy.

46 Reader Comments

This market is under pressure from the big players. I got a brand new Galaxy Tab 2.0 7 inch for 99 Euro after cahsback (in these cases Euro=$). A Nexus 7 is also to be had cheap if you look around for special deals, also consider the new Asus coming up.

Clearly the big guys are not content with the unknown brands to infringe on their playground.

"Even more odd is that the tablet doesn't use the purpose-built 7-inch tablet interface introduced by Jelly Bean and the Nexus 7, but the "old-style" 10-inch tablet layout introduced by the Motorola Xoom and Android 3.0"

And that's a good thing. Can't stand being forced to use the phone UI on my 7" tab. [Kobo refuses to give us root on the Arc so that we can change the single value in build.prop that would let us use the far better tablet UI, as we had it under ICS (or to do things like edit the hosts file so that we can have some safety while wandering around the 'Net)]

I'd avoid this model. We bought one of the Hisense Sero 7 Lite and two of the Sero 7 Pro two weeks ago and one of the Pro tablets "popped" and went dead the next day.

The Serio 7 Lite has had constant problems shutting down, even after resetting the operating system several times to the original factory restore and also the MicroSD card slot half the time doesn't work, after using multiple cards and brands.

With the other Sero 7 Pro after a week of use, we determined it had an HDMI port that didn't work and also had problems with constant shut downs.

Looking further into the HiSense brand over the last week, I know now they also make TV's and it seems that their failure rate is pretty high.

So here I am online looking for other alternatives after we returned all three tablets yesterday. Good luck in finding a good budget tablet... this isn't it.

I'd avoid this model. We bought one of the Hisense Sero 7 Lite and two of the Sero 7 Pro two weeks ago and one of the Pro tablets "popped" and went dead the next day.

The Serio 7 Lite has had constant problems shutting down, even after resetting the operating system several times to the original factory restore and also the MicroSD card slot half the time doesn't work, after using multiple cards and brands.

With the other Sero 7 Pro after a week of use, we determined it had an HDMI port that didn't work and also had problems with constant shut downs.

Looking further into the HiSense brand over the last week, I know now they also make TV's and it seems that their failure rate is pretty high.

So here I am online looking for other alternatives after we returned all three tablets yesterday. Good luck in finding a good budget tablet... this isn't it.

FWIW I haven't experienced these problems with either of our review units, but I can believe that QA with these is probably not as stringent as in something you'd buy from (say) Apple or Samsung.

"Even more odd is that the tablet doesn't use the purpose-built 7-inch tablet interface introduced by Jelly Bean and the Nexus 7, but the "old-style" 10-inch tablet layout introduced by the Motorola Xoom and Android 3.0"

And that's a good thing. Can't stand being forced to use the phone UI on my 7" tab. [Kobo refuses to give us root on the Arc so that we can change the single value in build.prop that would let us use the far better tablet UI, as we had it under ICS (or to do things like edit the hosts file so that we can have some safety while wandering around the 'Net)]

In Android 4.1, the "TabletUI" (what some people call the interface of Android 3.X and the tablet version of Android 4.0) can be obtained by changing the display density in the build.prop (just as you said). However, in Android 4.2 this "TabletUI" has been completely removed by Google. Now, someone has to rebuild a patched version of Android 4.2 for devices and repackage some of these files into a flashable .zip file for most people to use "TabletUI" on their Android 4.2 devices.

edit: As obvious as it may be, I also want to point out that since "TabletUI" was removed from Android in 4.2, the Nexus 10 isn't using it either (you can see that the status bar is placed on top in a Nexus 10 screenshot).

I went for the Sero 7 Pro as well, for $50 more I would say you get a much better deal. I have no problems with the Sero7 so far as others are reporting. Found a lot of info on the tablets over at www.sero7.com about accessories, rooting, Roms etc.

Over time, as tablets become more of a commodity rather than a luxury, I think that we'll start to see some very good tablets at the $100 and sub-$100 price point. Equally important, if tablets are to penetrate the developing world, they will need to be at that price point or lower.

Its kind of incredible that something like this can be made for $100 at all. Even 3 years ago I wouldn't have believed we'd see something like this. Now its here, it exists, and you could probably use it if you wanted to. Sure it sucks overall, but the pace of technological improvement and cost scaling is mind-blowing.

Its kind of incredible that something like this can be made for $100 at all. Even 3 years ago I wouldn't have believed we'd see something like this. Now its here, it exists, and you could probably use it if you wanted to. Sure it sucks overall, but the pace of technological improvement and cost scaling is mind-blowing.

Its kind of incredible that something like this can be made for $100 at all. Even 3 years ago I wouldn't have believed we'd see something like this. Now its here, it exists, and you could probably use it if you wanted to. Sure it sucks overall, but the pace of technological improvement and cost scaling is mind-blowing.

I can't even wait to see what a budget 2015 tablet can do.

Everything the best tablet money can buy for consumers today can.

By that time I'm sure most "top notch" features will be obsolete, given the fast upgrade cycle of tablet hardware. I would guess that a budget tablet in 2015 will have a ~2Ghz octa-core processor, maybe 3 or 4GB of ram, and at 7" have a 1080p screen.

Why not spend just a few dollars more for a true high-quality tablet. Now thru Father's Day you can get a 7 inch Nook HD for $129 or a 9 inch Nook HD+ for only $149! (That's $120 off the regular price for the HD+.)

With the early May software upgrade, the Nook HD/HD+ can run Android apps from the Google Play Store. When you consider their high-res screens and overall quality, at these prices they are an exceptional buy.

Why not spend just a few dollars more for a true high-quality tablet. Now thru Father's Day you can get a 7 inch Nook HD for $129 or a 9 inch Nook HD+ for only $149! (That's $120 off the regular price for the HD+.)

With the early May software upgrade, the Nook HD/HD+ can run Android apps from the Google Play Store. When you consider their high-res screens and overall quality, at these prices they are an exceptional buy.

Apart from sounding like a B&N rep, you are right in saying that these "budget" tablets do have an advantage over their competitors since they have the play store, which means that you could install a different launcher and google keyboard and make it "stock". Rooting it would be even better.

Thanks Ckantack for the recommendation and special thanks to Andrew for this write-up. Nook looks great, but there is one thing it lacked of that I need the most, a good camera for causal shooting. Otherwise, both tablets are a great buy for $129 8 GB and even this 9 inch $149 16 GB.

I've been thinking about buying a couple of tablets and wall-mounting them around the home so I can use them as a type of intercom system. Also would be nice to be able to quickly pull up my music and play it throughout the house, or change the thermostat/lights/whatever from any room. Even quick access to things like my calendar could be nice. So this having a low res screen or bad battery life wouldn't make much of a difference to me. Just need something cheap with a big enough screen to quickly click what I need to do.

Why not spend just a few dollars more for a true high-quality tablet. Now thru Father's Day you can get a 7 inch Nook HD for $129 or a 9 inch Nook HD+ for only $149! (That's $120 off the regular price for the HD+.)

With the early May software upgrade, the Nook HD/HD+ can run Android apps from the Google Play Store. When you consider their high-res screens and overall quality, at these prices they are an exceptional buy.

Apart from sounding like a B&N rep, you are right in saying that these "budget" tablets do have an advantage over their competitors since they have the play store, which means that you could install a different launcher and google keyboard and make it "stock". Rooting it would be even better.

Why not spend just a few dollars more for a true high-quality tablet. Now thru Father's Day you can get a 7 inch Nook HD for $129 or a 9 inch Nook HD+ for only $149! (That's $120 off the regular price for the HD+.)

With the early May software upgrade, the Nook HD/HD+ can run Android apps from the Google Play Store. When you consider their high-res screens and overall quality, at these prices they are an exceptional buy.

Apart from sounding like a B&N rep, you are right in saying that these "budget" tablets do have an advantage over their competitors since they have the play store, which means that you could install a different launcher and google keyboard and make it "stock". Rooting it would be even better.

The Nook HD/HD+ has Google apps pre-installed, including the Google Play store. And the Nook HD/HD+'s screen is actually very good. On the other hand, the Nook HD/HD+ doesn't support side-loading, lacks a camera, lacks HDMI-out, and uses a proprietary charging cable. So there are trade-offs either way. Honestly, I'd rather just spend the extra cash and get something that meets my needs then settle, even if it's as pricey as the Nexus 7 or iPad 4.

Its kind of incredible that something like this can be made for $100 at all. Even 3 years ago I wouldn't have believed we'd see something like this. Now its here, it exists, and you could probably use it if you wanted to. Sure it sucks overall, but the pace of technological improvement and cost scaling is mind-blowing.

I can't even wait to see what a budget 2015 tablet can do.

Free market competition that actually works, by making cost of market entry low both in terms of parts and final products. By this i mean that anyone willing to fork over the money for a ARM license can hammer out a SOC, and this again makes it easy for device manufacturers to source cheap parts for their designs. compare this to the "duopoly" surrounding X86 (There is VIA, but i think they have largely given up their x86 efforts outside of highly specialized markets).

The Rockchip 3066 is indeed a very strong performer. Games great, movies are no problem, allows for a smooth user interface. Its fault is that it's a bit of a battery hog. Combine that with the usual cheap and weak battery found in similar inexpensive tablets, and you'll want keep a charger handy.

Actually these cheap tabs have been around for a while, and can be purchased for even less than $99. I got my oldest daughter an $85 tablet with pretty much the same specs as the reviewed model for Christmas. Ordered and delivered direct from China. took around 3 weeks. It is still working fine, my daughter plays Minecraft on it all the time.

I suppose the bar keeps getting pushed higher, because this same model would have blown people's socks off three years ago, or even one year ago. Sure, it's no Nexus 7 or Galaxy Tab 2, but it's also half the price of those tablets and does what it's supposed to do. It represents a good value at this price point.

On the topic of batteries, i ran into a video the other day of $45 7 inch tablet that used a 3 batteries. Two hot swappable phone batteries (appeared to be Nokia knockoffs) and one internal one of unknown capacity.

Rockchip have a quad core chip coming soon, but it's really not much different from current model.

The other well known Chinese chip maker Amlogic have a quad core coming out in the next few months but this is also packing the latest T6xx series Mali GPU from Arm and on top of that it will play/decode 4K material (they make general purposes chips that run in everything from tablets to set top boxes).

By the years end it would be interesting to see a $99 tablet from Amlogic but you might have to source through online like Dealextreme, I doubt local store would have them as quickly. Ainol tablets will probably feature them at some point.

You will also see quad core chips from Allwinner the A31 series but these are Cortex A7 not A9 like the ones from Rockchip/Amlogic.

I've actually got a cheap Chinese tab from last year, which is the first time they offered a worthwhile experience (unlike 2 years ago). It suits its purpose, which is to be played with by a toddler and used to watch video. 1GHz single core CPU, similar to a top end smartphone from 2 years back.

Quite frankly, it mostly does the job. But I bring it up because this review brings up something that's exactly the same with my tablet - the storage. The CPU is fast enough for what it needs to do. It has sufficient RAM. It has enough storage, quantity-wise. But holy hell is that storage slow!! You'd be forgiven for thinking the damned thing had hung (and Android occasionally thinks it has) while loading something into RAM.

The Nook HD/HD+ has Google apps pre-installed, including the Google Play store. And the Nook HD/HD+'s screen is actually very good. On the other hand, the Nook HD/HD+ doesn't support side-loading, lacks a camera, lacks HDMI-out, and uses a proprietary charging cable. So there are trade-offs either way. Honestly, I'd rather just spend the extra cash and get something that meets my needs then settle, even if it's as pricey as the Nexus 7 or iPad 4.

Agreed with its limitations, but the screen and the memory, for the price, are simply fantastic, and if what you want is a reader/web browser and occasional email, the two nooks are the bee's knees. The proprietary charging cable is a real issue though. If that goes, you are screwed. You cannot even buy the things in Europe. Cannot understand why they did this.

In e-readers the kobo aura is analogous. Not all the functionality you might want, but fast and again, a fantastic screen and everything considered a very decent price for what you get. Increasingly having experienced it, I think that screen quality and resolution is the main buying consideration.

I can't work out why you decided to bench it against a Nexus 10 and Note 8 when it would have been of more interest up against a Tab 2.0 7 inch and an iPad mini, although the latter isn't in the same price bracket, obviously.

Why not spend just a few dollars more for a true high-quality tablet. Now thru Father's Day you can get a 7 inch Nook HD for $129 or a 9 inch Nook HD+ for only $149! (That's $120 off the regular price for the HD+.)

With the early May software upgrade, the Nook HD/HD+ can run Android apps from the Google Play Store. When you consider their high-res screens and overall quality, at these prices they are an exceptional buy.

Apart from sounding like a B&N rep, you are right in saying that these "budget" tablets do have an advantage over their competitors since they have the play store, which means that you could install a different launcher and google keyboard and make it "stock". Rooting it would be even better.

The Nook HD/HD+ has Google apps pre-installed, including the Google Play store. And the Nook HD/HD+'s screen is actually very good. On the other hand, the Nook HD/HD+ doesn't support side-loading, lacks a camera, lacks HDMI-out, and uses a proprietary charging cable. So there are trade-offs either way. Honestly, I'd rather just spend the extra cash and get something that meets my needs then settle, even if it's as pricey as the Nexus 7 or iPad 4.

Just to correct one thing, you can use HDMI out with an adapter, but it won't be 1080p unless you are watching hi res video

I recently got the Pro and love it. After seeing it in action, two family members went out and bought their own. Walmart sells a 2 year warranty for $15. $150 + SD slot + HDMI make it an easy choice over the Nexus. After using the Pro, I'd feel downright stupid paying $250 for a Nexus, and sure as shiat wouldn't pay $330 for a Mini.

Unfortunately the latter is still anemic enough that performance is still likely to be painful for anything beyond very light use. But unlike the 150, the 270 doesn't appear to be totally worthless.

The 270 looks very much like the one I have. I wouldn't personally use it. Performance is too flaky with the shit storage and just adequate CPU for use as anything other than a media player (HD video plays just fine). My 2 year-old thinks it's pure awesome sauce though.

It's good to see a little bit of Nook HD/HD+ love here. While my HD does lack a a camera (something I personally don't miss) it does have the SD card slot -- which Nexus lacks - so my ability in store data files is unlimited. As for lacking HDMI output and the odd charging cable, well that oddball charging cable will connect to a B&N HDMI adapter, so that ability is there, using the same output pot as the charger/usb interface to the PC.

The onky thing it lacked for my puposes was access tot he Google store -- which it now has.

Screen is is superb, storage unlimited, responsiveness great, and great support from B&N. All the software limitiations it started out with are removed. What's not to love?

I'd avoid this model. We bought one of the Hisense Sero 7 Lite and two of the Sero 7 Pro two weeks ago and one of the Pro tablets "popped" and went dead the next day.

So here I am online looking for other alternatives after we returned all three tablets yesterday. Good luck in finding a good budget tablet... this isn't it.

So wait a second. You spent $400 on three tablets that are apparently crap and returned them but still can't find an alternative? Unless you absolutely have to have 3 tablets why haven't you bought 2 Nexus 7's, you know the benchmark in the 7" Android tablet space? You would have been time ahead by now at least.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.